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With the rise of new media a paradigm shift has occurred in the time when people "consume" museums. In the old days people would pick a specific moment to visit a museum. Maybe dress up a bit, make it a day out. On an average they would pick two, maybe three moments a year to spend time with museums. Nowadays, using Twitter and Facebook, we try to make people interact with museums twenty-four seven. They don't even have to be dressed to "visit" a museum.

This conference focuses on the interaction between museums and communities. In times of mobility and change, history museums play an important role in societal questions of social cohesion, identity and belonging. In search of their roots, people turn to heritage. History is popular as never before and it surfaces in all contemporary media. At the same time, the communication era offers new possibilities to form communities, based on common interests and preferences or popular and corporate culture. Museums in general, as part of the public sphere, are an important tool in this dynamic process of heritage formation and the performance of community.  

"When was the last time you visited the library? Or a museum? When was the last time you read a reference book from cover to cover or took the time to travel to an exhibition? I bet it was quite some time ago since most of these things are now readily available online, digitised and searchable."

I've spent much of the past three years on the road giving workshops and talks about audience participation in museums. This post shares some of the most interesting questions I've heard throughout these experiences. I like to use half of any allotted time slot to talk and half for Q&A, so we usually have time to get into meaty discussions. Feel free to add your own questions and answers in the comments!

"Infographic: The Best Times To Post To Twitter & Facebook"

Time travel through Bristol on the iPhone: The Time Traveller's Guide to Bristol project will launch a website later this week and an iPhone app at on July 28, allowing users to browse archive material and upload their own images of contemporary Bristol. It features 100 years of film and photography focused on six areas of Bristol, and invites users to superimpose archive material on a 3D model of contemporary shots - some of which were badly damaged during WW2, like Castle Park.

"I've been blogging for a period of time but no one's reading my blog" is a refrain I often hear on BlogChat. Help, how do I get my blog to take off?

I've been building a site in my spare time for a friend - it is called The Last Survivors, and focuses on two particular species that are facing extinction. One of the requirements was for the editors of the site to be able to add results from their surveys of these species quickly to a Google Map for embedding in the website. Nothing particularly new in the build there, but I wanted to make sure that the workflow was as seamless as possible and at the same time keep the dev work to a minimum.

"We need a blog!".  The boss needs to be able to cover their trail, so they require a strategy to go along with it.  The team creates a strategy full of love and happiness, the boss has no clue what it means and three (3) days later…violla!  The blog is in place.

The Andy Warhol Museum released the AR Mobile App 'Layar'. "The Layar turns your mobile device into an augmented-reality viewer. By adding The Andy Warhol Museum Layar, you'll be able to view locations pivotal in Andy Warhol's life and work overlayed on real-time images from your device's camera. View locations in Pittsburgh, PA and New York, NY and dive into related information and photos prepared by The Warhol's education curators." [the warhol]

double rainbow/ donald judd mash-up: whens the last time art made you feel like this?

Every day millions of Britons engage with the arts and cultural sector through digital media.1 This engagement comes in many forms and is in a constant state of evolution, driven by technological change. Five years ago, mobile phones were for texts and calls and Facebook barely existed. Today, a quarter of us have a smartphone through which we can listen to a song, or watch a trailer for an artistic performance.2 Over 40,000 people track the Royal Opera House, and over 58,000 the British Museum, through Facebook; while FACT in Liverpool has 7,000 Twitter followers.However, this research represents the first time that this online engagement with arts and culture in England has been captured and quantified

Salgado untersucht Partizipation von interaktiven Auststellungsstücken. Sie entwirft anhand von 6 Fallbeispielen Paramter zur Entwicklgn und Beurteilung von Partizipation: * Theme (chosen for participation, and the openess with wihich it is presented) * Atmosphere (of the piece) * Input-output modalities * Accessibility * Time: Ties to the actual time of the visit * Community: Ties to the community Konference-Beitrag an der "Museums an the Web"-Konference, 2008 in Motreal

Museums are increasingly using technology to reach an audience outside their walls. And I, of course, am a complete evangelist for new media and for institutions adapting as fast as possible to changes new technologies are bringing to our world. But when the time came to talk to the museum heads about using social media tools to expand their audiences and enrich the museum-going experience, I found myself oddly reticent.

Nielsen/McKinsey Unternehmen, zu Entwicklung & Möglichkeiten von transmedia: "A new sector in entertainment has been developing over time, capitalizing on the abundance of platforms from which consumers can be reached.  "Transmedia storytelling" engages consumers through different means, shifting from the traditional linear story, to a more complex, multi-dimensional "story world."  

Museum aan de stroom - a brand-new city museum covering the art, shipping and folklore of Antwerp, Belgium - is offering web visitors real, real-time guides. Through June 7, visitors to the museum's website can interact with, and direct, flesh-and-blood guides through their Discover the MAS Live program and website.

"Its short history is this: I worked on it for several years, acquired a high-powered agent, had some brushes with major publishers, then, crickets. Way back when, say, a dozen years ago, a single editor could acquire a book, but today a whole board is usually required to sign off on a project, especially when a big advance is involved. Worse yet, the traditional book-publishing business has fallen on hard times, with layoffs and news that vaunted old publishers such as Houghton Mifflin have literally put the freeze on acquisitions. In short, it's ugly out there, particularly for new fiction writers. "

The annual UKMW conferences, convened by the Museums Computer Group, have long been the place for high quality presentations and discussions on the matters that are shaping museums online today. As the UK heritage sector continues to live through difficult times, this year's conference is an opportunity to reflect on the new landscape museums are now in, learn from inspiring speakers and network with your peers.

"It's one thing to manage your profiles on the proliferating social networking and sharing sites as an individual, but as an institution it's quite another. So, we ask ourselves this question at Tate social media HQ all the time. We'd like to know how you see it."

PEW-Daten zur Internetnutzung in den USA: Grounding Digital Information Trends: "Mobile change our relationship to time and space" - location based and apps are the next big thing - the use of the internet from 2000-2010 (Broadband adoption (2000-2010), demographics of use, ect.)